process

Jessica, Jan, Jenean and Michelle started it and I've decided to give it a go myself. This is just a little glimpse into what happens when we take an idea and follow a process until it becomes something a bit more cohesive and/or useful.

The ladies that I mentioned all blogged about their pattern making processes. In my case, I started with yesterday's) sketch and ended up with a prototype for stationery. It could easily become a pattern for anything else I suppose. Below is the hypothetical example that I worked on today.

1 - I scanned my sketchbook and used the image of my doodle as a backdrop in Adobe Illustrator. I placed a white transparent box over it (digital tissue paper of sorts) and started tracing over the image. The end result is a graphic and clean look.

2 - After a lot of moving things around I end up with these. The image on the top left is the one I created today. The image with yellow accents was the one I posted yesterday. The big difference is obvious. The feel is completely different in the yellow version because it is hand drawn and color was added digitally.

3 - One thing lead to another and I started wondering about other shapes. The bottom left is where I'm just trying to figure out what I'm going to do with two of the bowl/flower shapes. The bottom right is the final combination of the two elements. It reminds me of a logo mark.

In essence I ended up with three distinct looking images from one sketch idea. Two plant like shapes and one graphic icon.

4 - Applications - Below are just a couple of possible applications for two of the images. My favorite is definitely the top one. I'm actually thinking I may want to try it out printed on fabric for a cushion.

And that's it. This exercise could go on and on. Like I said this is something I just worked on this afternoon. If I had more time to refine this who knows where I'd end up.

By the way, for any of you wondering, this process doesn't work for my paper projects at all. I mentally go over, and over my 3D paper projects before ever touching paper or my Xacto. Once I have the design in mind I may sketch something out really quickly to record measurements and then I just go for it. Nine times out of ten, what I had in my head works out and it looks exactly the way I imagined it.